Special Edition: CDC’s Entire Traumatic Brain Injury Team Eliminated (5/1/25 Newsletter)
This week, we present a special edition newsletter reporting the elimination of the CDC’s entire traumatic brain injury (TBI) team, heralding a significant loss of concussion education and research.
Due to the significance of this news, we have elected to focus this newsletter entirely on the subject. We will return to our regular coverage of concussion research and news in the next edition, May 16.
Concussion Alliance is prepared to support patients, families, and providers who are dealing with this injury. This is a critical period for non-governmental organizations to continue to provide this education, and the need for resources like these is higher than ever. To spread awareness, please forward this email to people in your community.
Do you find the Concussion Update helpful? If so, forward this to a friend and suggest they subscribe.
In this newsletter: Opportunities and Special Edition: CDC’s Entire Traumatic Brain Injury Team Eliminated
Writer: Malayka Gormally
Editor: Conor Gormally
Do you find the Concussion Update helpful? If so, forward this to a friend and suggest they subscribe.
Opportunities
April 28 - June 15, 2025: Highly Recommended! A free, multi-week, self-paced Online Concussion Course presented in English and French by the Universities of Calgary and Laval. This course is for health and school professionals, coaches and athletes, and parents; the time commitment is 1.5–2 hours per week. The course includes presentations and an online discussion board with interesting conversations. Register by May 31; you must finish the course by June 15.
May 3-4 and May 17-18, 11 am - 5:30 pm PT: A 20-hour, online LoveYourBrain Yoga for Traumatic Brain Injury Training (Level 1). The course is on a sliding scale, with some scholarships available.
Tuesday, May 13, 3 pm EST: a webinar, Silent Struggles: Traumatic Brain Injuries and Mental Health in Law Enforcement, presented by Jaclyn Caccesse, PhD, hosted by the Brain Injury Association of America. Free for patients and families, $50 for CEU credit.
May 27, 6 pm EST: a free webinar, Concussion Mythology and non-Evidence Based Therapies, presented by Dr. Carmela Tartaglia and hosted by the Canadian Concussion Centre. Register in advance.
Thursday, May 22, 6– 8 pm EST: Co-founders Conor Gormally and Malayka Gormally will present Creating Accessible Patient-Facing Resources at the Public Forum on Concussion Awareness and Care presented by the Canadian Concussion Centre. The program is free and registration in advance is required.
Click here for the program with the list of speakers for the full 2-hour public forum.
CDC’s Entire Traumatic Brain Injury Team Eliminated
An expanded version of this article is available here.
On April 1, the entire 5-person traumatic brain injury (TBI) team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the team responsible for the Heads Up concussion resources, online training courses, and the National Concussion Surveillance System, got an email: their jobs had been furloughed due to the President's order, and they were to vacate the office that day. They were locked out of their government computers on April 15 and subsequently required to return them.
The TBI team was part of the Division of Injury Prevention; this 200-person team was also eliminated on April 1 as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mass firing of an estimated 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Concussion Alliance is in communication with two members of the TBI team who wish to remain anonymous. They are deeply concerned that there is no one to maintain or update the Heads Up program, and both believe that the Heads Up website will likely be taken down. We at Concussion Alliance want to make our community aware of this development and continue to provide access to resources for concussion patients and providers.
Meredith Wadman first covered the elimination of the TBI team in an April 10 article for Science. Confusingly, in mid-April, a leaked draft budget for Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC, included the "proposed" elimination of the CDC Heads Up program and the National Concussion Surveillance System.
The impact of the Heads Up program has been profound. The website has many accessible resources, including downloadable PDFs in English and Spanish. Additionally, one of the anonymous employees emailed us saying that the CDC Heads Up program "has trained more than 10 million people on concussion education and management" since 2010 through 6 different training courses, including roughly 150,000 youth sports coaches taking Heads Up's Youth Sports training courses each year.
Coaches are required by law to take a concussion training course in 45 states, with the CDC courses either required or recommended. The anonymous TBI team member worries that "coaches may lose access to the CDC HEADS UP training—making their ability to comply with concussion laws and policies, and ultimately, their ability to coach this upcoming season unclear."
How can all this concussion education be preserved? An article by Julian Lucas in The New Yorker brought our attention to a complete, functional backup of the CDC website, including Heads Up, called Restored CDC, which was created by a "loose coalition of archivists and librarians." However, the training courses are not housed on the CDC website but on an external platform called CDC TRAIN, so Restored CDC does not protect them.
A quote in the Science article sums up this calamity. "'Cutting these programs will literally roll back decades of progress and harm not only the people that have been injured, but the people that are going to be injured in the future,' says Owen Z. Perlman, a physical rehabilitation physician who sits on the board of the Brain Injury Association of America." This is a critical period for non-governmental organizations to continue to provide this education, and the need for these resources is higher than ever.
You can learn more about this evolving situation and additional eliminated programs in an expanded version of this article, available here.
Another way to follow this situation is to sign up for the Brain Injury Association of America advocacy alerts.
You Can Support Concussion Patients
Join our community of monthly donors committed to improving how concussions are prevented, managed, and treated, thereby supporting long-term brain health for all. Learn more.
You can also make an impact with a one-time gift or tax-friendly options such as Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), IRA Charitable Rollovers, and Planned Giving: leave a gift in your will. Learn more.